Graham Rahal has yet to be officially confirmed as a Champ Car driver for Newman/Haas Racing in 2007 but the talented 17-year-old continued his impressive audition Wednesday afternoon at Mercedes Sugarland Raceway. source: champcarworldseries.com A week after matching lap times at Homestead, Fla. with three-time champ Sebastien Bourdais, Rahal smoked the track record at MSR by eight-tenths of a second. The son of the three-time CART champion toured the 2.38-mile road course in 1:10.37 in Newman/Haas' Lola-Cosworth. The old mark of 1:11.29 was turned in last winter by former F1 driver Antonio Pizzonia for Rocketsports. "I just spoke with him on the phone and he's happy with his progress," said Bobby Rahal. "He seems to be picking things up nicely and he also had a good test at Homestead." Young Rahal, who finished second in the Atlantic series this season and scored the most victories (five), was sharing the track with PKV Racing's new driver, Neel Jani and the Swiss GP2 front-runner had just cracked the 1:12.00 barrier when rains ended practice for the day. Last week, A1GP champ Alex Premat of France turned the quickest lap of 1:11.860 for MiJack/Conquest Racing during a three-team Champ Car test session.
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